And on the 230th day he rose.

I was up into the wee hours of the morning lost in text and reading, falling in and out of sleep, not wanting to finally admit defeat and go to bed. So as the sun came up I finally surrendered and went to sleep. A few hours later Aqila’s voice had a strange excitement as I heard her calling form the living room. Still hazy from sleep I couldn’t tell if I was dreaming or not, but as her voice got louder and her delightful squeals came closer I knew something was afoot.

“Look, Look, who it is! Meatball!!!” It took me a minute to remember who Meatball was and before it could register she was showing me a little turtle in her hand. “Holy shit” I thought, it couldn’t be.

You see Meatball went missing at the end of last summer when the cats began coming around. His container was outside and the cats knocked the lid off and we had assumed Meatball was a casualty. Aqila claims she saw Lamar our cat watching a spot in the yard with intense interest, she then saw a slight rustle in the leaves and went out to investigate. Sure enough little Meatball was moving about. How he survived the cat attack I do not know, but even more impressive is how he survived the freezing cold and snowy winter that ensued. He was not in a pond, must have had to burrow deep and then go into a complete metabolic shutdown to survive the winter. Yet here he is.